The probe Schiaparelli, looking for traces of life, would have landed on the red planet; the confirmation of your arrival you can take a few hours
Darmstadt (Germany). – The European Space Agency (ESA) and the Russian Roscosmos are waiting right now to get the signal to confirm the landing on Mars of the testing module “Schiaparelli” of the mission ExoMars, which took off seven months ago.
The maneuver automatic landing began to 121 kilometres of the surface of Mars with a rapid decrease in speed, until then 21,000 kilometers per hour. The control center of the mission, located in Darmstadt (Germany), is not involved in the landing, since there is a delay of about 10 minutes in the communication.
The probe should have entered the orbit of Mars at a speed of six miles per hour at 14:45 GMT (11.45 argentina), and also landed, but the confirmation could be delayed for several hours. The probe should slow down thanks to the deployment of a parachute.
“We come to Mars, now we must simply begin to talk to us,” said Donato Amoroso, managing director of Thales Alenia Space Italy, the company responsible for the design and construction of the probe Schiaparelli, whose descent on the red planet would have already been done. However, it is expected a signal of final confirmation.
“we Live with great emotion these moments because they are years of work and the mission is really complex, to the limit of technological knowledge,” he said. Loving added that “now we should just start to have a dialogue with the probe, to build a bridge”.
The module “Schiaparelli” and the satellite traveled so far, “Trace Gas Orbiters” (TGO), they moved seven months ago from the space base of Baikonur, in Kazakhstan, and part of the mission ExoMars, which will try to look for evidence of life on Mars.
Second mission
The satellite TGO will reach to the end of 2017 the orbit is desired to be able to undertake your research about 400 kilometres above Mars. The second part of the mission, which plans for the landing of a “rover” on the neighboring planet, is scheduled for 2020. The future of this second phase will depend on the success of the landing of “Schiaparelli” and the entry into orbit of the TGO.
The European Space Agency (ESA) received the confirmation, through your station in Canberra, that the start of this complex maneuver is produced well. Now, the Orbiter has begun to record the sequence of entry, descent and landing on Mars of the module Schiaparelli.
The Orbiter has reached its destination and it was necessary to change its path through a complex maneuver of braking to enter Mars orbit to be captured by its gravity.
try Again
Europe try to as well for a second time to land on Mars, an operation designed to test their ability to pose a device safely on the red planet, thirteen years after the misadventures of the small Beagle 2.
At the same time, the probe scientific Russian-european TGO must be placed in martian orbit, a delicate operation that requires great precision. Until now only the americans managed to pose in Mars artifacts that managed to work.
The probe and the lander, Schiaparelli is the first episode of ExoMars, an ambitious scientific mission Russian-european is divided into two halves (2016 and 2020), and aims to search for signs of life present and past on Mars.
TGO (Trace Gas Orbiter) will have to “sniff” the martian atmosphere to detect traces of gases such as methane, which could indicate the presence of a form of life present on the planet.
“at the moment everything is going well” for the probe and for Schiaparelli that currently hibernates to save your energy, declared Tuesday night at the AFP responsible for the module of landing, Thierry Blancquaert, present in the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC), in Darmstadt (Germany).
The martian climate is not excellent. “There are dust storms. But nothing dramatic. Don’t bother. It is not worrisome,” he said.
This is the second time that Europe is launched to the conquest of Mars. In 2003, the european probe Mars Express had broken down the mini module Beagle 2, of conception british, but never gave signs of life. It is known from 2015 that landed, but that was damaged.
